Thank you. guitar solo And can I get a motion to approve the summary? I have a motion, a second. Are there any changes, additions, corrections, whatever? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Thank you. Any opposed? Next on the agenda is the division, an update on the Division of Police Home Fleet Policy. Is someone, Jamie, are you? Welcome. Thank you, sir. You're welcome. The last time we spoke about this issue, I committed to the council that I would sit down with the FOP and talked through some options for amending the contract to allow officers who hoped to drive their cars off duty to be able to do that. In the past couple months, we've done that several times to talk through some options. But during that time, the FOP had a change in leadership. Jason Rotherman, who is here today, is the new FOP president. He and I have gotten to know each other over the past month or so. But when Jason, when he was elected, he wanted to bring the membership into the conversation more than they had been in the past. And so he took some time to do that. And we met yesterday again to talk through how the membership felt about the policy and the changes. So we have some good information to sort through right now. I don't have a final proposal to put in front of you today. However, over the next few days, we're going to be looking through our options and crunching some numbers. and hopefully we will have an amendment that both focuses on the goals of the collective bargaining agreement as well as give some flexibility to those officers that do want to drive their vehicles off duty. So that's where we are today. Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Chair. Mr. Amos, thank you for coming and giving us an update. I put this in the committee back in November of last year, actually October, and I know we've had a couple updates since then. And how much longer do we need to come up? Next meeting will be soon, 30 days will be long enough to have a final proposal? I suspect we'll have a resolution before then. However, if we do amend the contract, it will require that the membership ratify the terms of that arrangement. So I don't know exactly the number of days that that would require to ratify the contract, the amendment to the contract, but we should have all this wrapped up in the next few weeks. In the meantime, are we still collecting data, the data that was presented to us back in November? Are we still tracking that and the potential cost savings? We are, but I think it would be helpful to refresh our memory on how that's going. So if you'd like to add that. So when you report back, I'd like to see what our current numbers are, if we can. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. You're welcome. So will you be prepared to present something at the March 11th meeting, Jamie? My goal is to have, yes, that's my goal. Okay. Thank you, sir. You're welcome. The next item on our agenda is the Division of Police Staff being placed in committee by Council Member Stenet. Do you have any comments? No. Other than welcome, Chief, and we look forward to hearing your presentation. And the reason I put this in there, we heard fires last month. And I think here in our other large Division of Public Safety, we also heard corrections last month. I'm sorry, I said fire. We heard corrections last month. And we have yet to hear about the Division of Police. So welcome and thank you for doing this. Thank you. As you know, I think Council Member Stennett asked us to come back in the fall and do a staffing update. specifically as for current staffing levels, an evaluation of future staffing assessment, and information regarding the consideration of expanding to a fourth patrol sector. So hopefully we'll be able to answer those issues and give you the information that you need. I'd just like to begin by saying that during my tenure as chief, one of the things that we've really tried to do is operate efficiently and leanly to try to do all that we could and get the most bang for our buck and provide the best services that we could for the citizens of Fayette County, even during the downturn in the economy. And we feel like we've done a good job with that. The tough economic times, though, did provide an environment where we had to make some tough decisions, and those affected staffing levels. As you well know, we've presented on that in the past. It included cutting overtime and budgets, operational budgets, as well as personnel budgets. But these choices resulted in savings of dollars to the urban county government, and we felt like resulted in not having maybe to endure layoffs of current employees. So we took that very seriously, and hopefully the results speak for themselves. But where are we now? And I think that's a very good question. Right now we have a sworn authorized strength of 555. We have 19 recruits in the academy. So our current sworn strength is 545. 19 recruits are in the academy, which leaves us with a sworn operational strength of 526 officers. From the 526 officers, we have 19 who are assigned to modified duty, either injury, maternity leave, or in some capacity other than full duty, and three military deployments. So that makes a total of 22 that aren't available of the 526. So that leaves us an available operational strength of 504 officers. As you know, since 2012, we've hired a number of officers. Actually, 83 recruits have graduated from our academy to move on to the solo phase. That has helped us to regain some of our strength and regain some momentum and get out from behind the curve that we were behind before that. So we're very glad that we're at the position that we're in in terms of that. But as you know, it takes time from the time we do make the decision to hire officers to be able to realize them on the street. Normally about 11 months from the time that they're actually hired. About 16 months from the time usually that we decide to hire and have to go through a recruitment process, hire, train, and then get them on the street. What we're going to propose today is we've been looking at a lot of issues that we've seen and considered some needs. And we're going to propose, be proposing a strategic adjustment plan to our staffing. And that will be presented and vetted through the budgeting process. So I won't give specific numbers today, but we are working on those. I've spoken with the mayor. The mayor has been receptive to the idea of looking at that and working with us. So we're crunching numbers and trying to finalize a proposal that will go through the budget process. Some of the goals of this for the strategic adjustment plan is, first of all, that it ensures available response capabilities of the division. The proposal we're going to propose will allow for an adjustment in personnel in both operational considerations, and it will be done in a financially responsible manner. Adjustment to authorized strength will occur over a four-year period, according to the plan that we will propose to spread out costs and to grow responsibly. Our response to calls for service continues to remain a high priority. That has been a high priority for us throughout the downturn in the economy. This plan will look at ways to evaluate adjustments and available resources to increase coverage. And I'm going to offer that as a proposal, a counterproposal to having, implementing a fourth sector plan, because I think it's much more cost effective and provides additional coverage. Currently, we're evaluating adding additional beat officers in the sectors that are the most busy, where the most growth has occurred in the last several years, to add additional coverage and additional officers in those areas, which will add significantly to our ability to respond to calls for service. This plan is proactive and flexible, and we designed it in order to meet community needs. We look to provide the ability to increase proactive responses while remaining flexible with the availability of the folks that we have. We did see a decrease in crime this year, and that may be a question that you would ask. Why would you say that we may need to adjust staffing levels even though we experienced a decrease in crime last year? The crime decrease was about 7.8% overall. That was largely driven by a reduction in property crimes. And that's something that a trend that we're seeing throughout the country right now is a reduction in property crimes. There are a lot of reasons for that, but, you know, we are where we are and we're very happy that we're enjoying that reduction right now. But the thing that we're seeing is the issues and concerns that we're tasked with are increasingly more complex and staff intensive. And to give you some examples of that, the heroin issue is complicating things for us, to be quite honest with you. This last weekend, for an example, on Saturday evening alone, Saturday night, we responded with the fire department to three overdose situations. And the fire department was able to shoot Narcan into them, and it revived those three people. We responded to another overdose situation on Sunday morning, and the person didn't survive. So four of those in a weekend shows to us or indicates that things are moving along pretty steady or growing. So that is an issue that we have to put a lot of resources into, and it's going to be an issue that we have to commit to for the long term. Recent increase in robberies, as you may have noticed, and if you've watched TV, you've seen some of that over the last couple of months. And we did see a fairly significant increase in robberies in the month of January. We went back and compared January 2014 to January 2013. And even with the cold weather, the number of robberies went up significantly just for that month. Now, we've been pretty successful. Our guys have worked really hard and gals, and we've put some folks in jail that are responsible for two separate groups that were working and committing robberies almost every day. But the thing that we found that those folks have in common are they're addicted to heroin. And so what we think we see is folks that may have that addiction tend to rob instead of maybe steal something and then have to go through the process of fencing it and taking longer to realize the profit in order to support their habit. So that, too, is another issue that requires significant staff resources. We had, I won't say how many folks, but we had a number of people out on stakeouts until we were able to capture both of those groups. It was a very high priority for us. We were afraid someone was going to get hurt if we didn't get them off the street. We did experience a homicide increase from 2013 compared to 2012. Homicides, traditionally, that's not something I'm willing to hang my hat on and tell you that there's a correlation to, because traditionally they've gone up and down, and sometimes we can't figure out why. But we did experience an increase in homicides from 2013 over 2012. And then the efforts like we had with juvenile violence are also very complicated and staff intensive for us to deal with, like we experienced on Georgetown Street this past year. That required a different philosophy, and we believe it's one that works, where we go in, we partner with folks in the community, and we look to try to make a difference that's sustainable for the long term, not just go in and put people in jail and wait a few months and have to go back and do the same thing. We're trying to empower neighborhoods and partner with them to try to keep the quality of life the best it can be. So those are some of the reasons that we feel like it's necessary at this point for us to consider staffing adjustment so that we can plan for and be able to respond and continue to provide the quality of life that we all enjoy here. And finally, I mentioned earlier that the plan is fiscally responsible. I won't ask for more than I need. In fact, I don't think I've ever been up here and asked you for anything, but I won't. That's the nature of how we do business. But I will ask you for what I need, and the plan will be something that you can implement and fund over a four-year period, recognizing that there are a whole lot of needs, and we're just one of those. In terms of the fourth sector viability, Council Member Stenet, we looked at that, and just to give you an idea of some of the costs, and these are pretty rough, granted, but the addition of a fourth sector right now would incur an increased cost for annual maintenance and utilities. We didn't put a price tag on that. Facility expense, which would either come in the form of a lease or building a structure. under the current sector structure an additional staff increase would be needed and that's where the cost starts to increase significantly in order to have a fourth sector now we would estimate that we would need 50 additional officers and that would be in addition to the adjustment that we're going to recommend because those all won't be in in a patrol function That would be a cost of $3.2 million that we would add to our annual personnel cost. And then a command staff to staff the sector, and that would be an additional $1.2 million to add additional command staff. So as you can see, that's going to be a fairly costly option for us to get extra coverage. The plan that we will propose will be to add beats in east and west sector, the areas that have had the most growth, and utilize the existing command structure so that we don't have to add any additional commanders and add to that cost that we would take on in personnel from now on. Just to summarize again, this strategic adjustment plan that we will be presenting in our budget is a responsible plan that ensures operational flexibility, is fiscally responsible, and increases our response capabilities to the needs of the community. The evaluation includes areas that you may be very interested in for patrol, so adjustment in patrol staffing levels, clear response, and clear neighborhood officers. I know that's been something that council members have been interested in. Traffic, we'd like to have the traffic second shift back on, and investigation and evaluation of other strategic assignment needs as they become available. So do you have any questions? Thank you, Chief. We do have a few council members signed on. Council members stand in. Thank you, Chair and Chief. Thank you for coming before us today. I'll take your word for it that in the budget process is when we're going to get the meat and the real numbers of what we're trying to accomplish with our Division of Police. I like that to happen today, but I respect you and understand that you'll present those during the budget process. and I'll leave it there. My big concern is in our last audit in November, and this is where this question of we need a presentation of police staffing came out, and anyone can go get this audit, the number of police arrests have dramatically decreased from 22,000 in 2004 now down to 14,000. Do you know why that would be, what the difference is? We had a council retreat. I'm sure we could probably stab in the dark at some of the reasons why with the new laws and things. But we've had dramatically decrease, so that could spell maybe you don't need as big a police force because the arrests are down. You said crime was down, which, you know, if you're a victim of crime last night, that stat doesn't mean anything to you. And you all do one of the finest jobs in the country running our police department, and I'm very confident that you'll manage with whatever you're given you have the last several years, even in lean budget times. And a lot of that goes to your command staff and the dedication to every officer. But how do you counteract that when the number of arrests are down and still grow the force? Well, without looking at the stats and having a chance to analyze it, I would say the biggest impact on that has been House Bill 463, which took our ability to arrest away a large number of the crimes that we arrested for prior to. And now we issue citations instead. So that has drastically affected the numbers of fiscal arrests that we make. So that number is fiscal arrest probably in our CAFR versus citations. I would have to see. Okay. That's categorized. I'm not sure. And then the other number in here that really, to me, says a lot is in 2004, we had 460 patrol units out on patrol. Today, or last fiscal year, we had 424. And to me, that's where the rubber meets the road. That's where citizens see our services. They can feel more comfortable with more people out there. So we have 36 less cars out there. So, again, where is the need truly for growing our forest? Well, again, in response to some of the requests that we've had and discussions we've had with council members, we think that we need to grow in east and west sector. Our data supports that. The number of calls for service that we get have grown significantly in each of those two sectors compared to relatively stable call volume in central sector. So we feel like central sector is staffed adequately to do the job that we're doing now, but we feel like with all the growth and continued growth that's going on in both east and west sector, those are areas that we need to redefine some beach structures and take a look at that to make sure we're being as efficient as we possibly can be. And we think that's going to require adding some additional beats in those areas. Yeah. And I, for one, want to get back to the second shift traffic officers back on the job. I want to get back to the clear officers in my district because I think those were two valuable programs that people are missing today. And I think they did a lot for our community because they were more hands-on. People saw them. They were more visible, especially the clear officer. We had one of the finest ones in the department, and they really made a big impact. And I think you'll see a difference if we can get those back on the street. I know you need more officers for that, and I look forward to knowing what that number is because in 2005 or 2006, We were on an escalating plan of 50 new officers a year, and obviously the economy changed, and our whole world changed for that matter. So thank you for your hard work, and look forward to see your pencil sharpening and what numbers we can really afford. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Lawless. First of all, I want to thank you for your leadership, and I don't recall you being up here asking for anything since I've been on council. I think one of the startling numbers is that you have only 505, I believe it was, available officers, which is 51 short of your authorized strength. And I can attest that you are dealing with far more dangerous and complex crimes. I think in large part Casper sounded like a good idea, and it did do some good things, but it has increased medical costs by people having to get tested. and now people are bringing heroin into the state. And as you said, the heroin addict is going to stick a gun down your throat rather than try to get in an empty house and take out a widescreen TV. So the clear officers, I mean, and so I think we've really asked you and the police force to do a far more complex job with one hand tied behind your back. And I applaud you all for how you've managed that and what a great job you've done. The clear officers are so essential in most of the neighborhoods in the 3rd District with the UK situation, and there are no clear officers on duty at night, January, February, March, and maybe April, and it has made a huge difference. You know, it's a big difference when a patrol car that's not familiar with the situation drives by and doesn't hear anything but doesn't realize, you know, what to look for, et cetera. And it's been awful this semester in some of those areas, which I kind of thought the sub-zero weather would help, but alas, it did not. So I really hope that this plan to bump up your authorized strength isn't four years long, that somehow, because for me, public safety, and that's police, fire, community corrections, is the most essential service that any community needs to offer its citizens. You know, so I want to really support you and the administration in any way I can to let's escalate that building the force, because 51 short of authorized strength is just you all can't do the job. You can't do the job if you've got one hand tied behind your back. And like I say, I'm aware of much more complex problems. We've even had shootings in the neighborhoods around the U.K. So thank you so much for this presentation and all your work, and I hope when the pencil hits the paper with the administration, they will support bringing on more officers more quickly. And I do agree that adding a fourth sector doesn't make financial sense when you look at how many of those, how many more officers we could have on the street with that kind of money. So I really appreciate your leadership. I have the utmost respect for you and for the officers that are out there doing their job. So thank you. Thank you. Council Member Akers. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Chief, for this. And I want to commend you all for your solve rates, I guess. Is that the term? The what? The solve rates of the crimes. Recently when we met, you were telling me that it's 37 of the last 38 homicides have been solved by the department, which is pretty remarkable for national standards. And I know that the robberies as well, that you all have solved lots of those that have been serial robbers, I guess, of late. So I want to commend you all for that, despite the fact that the number of robberies and homicides you said had increased this 2013 over 12. You didn't mention, though, do you have the percentages of increase, how much those have increased over the year prior? I can tell you just for the month of January, because those are fresh on my mind, the actual number of robberies for 2013, the total number for the entire year, decreased by about 130 compared to 2012. So both violent crime and nonviolent crime, property crimes, were trending downward slightly. Property crimes did much more so than violent crimes. We are relatively stable to where we've been. For the month of January, though, just in terms of robberies, if I recall, we had in 2013, we had 50 robberies in the month of January, or excuse me, 32 robberies in the month of January and 50 in the month of January 2014. So that's 36% increase. But those were largely driven by two groups that were just really hurting us pretty bad. And from our meetings of late as well, and just over the past year, discussions that we've had in the West, considering issues in the West sector and the crime, and as you mentioned, it is more complicated. It's not property crimes. It's not minor crimes. There's gang violence. There's drug violence. There's people from out of the state that are, you know. And so I just, I want you to know that I would certainly support, you know, increased beat officers in the West sector and hope that that will work out in the budget discussions coming forward. I do wanted to follow up on Council Member Stenet when we had our retreat a week or so ago, whenever that was. And there was the number of decreased traffic citations issued despite a lot more officers in the traffic division or department. So my question would be, are traffic officers used in other areas? I mean, other than just writing citations, I assume. Sometimes they are. Traffic traditionally has handled special events like basketball games, the traffic and those kind of things. They take a lot of hours, man hours away from abilities to enforce traffic laws on the street. But our traffic numbers compared to when? It was 2004. We looked at the whole past decade, but yeah, it was 2004 to 2014. We looked at the trends and numbers every year and all of that. Ten years ago, I'm guessing, but we would have had in excess of 30, maybe as high as 60 at one time, folks in traffic or traffic unit. Today, we have 13 or 14 actual officers. So that was an area that we had to make some tough decisions in. And that's why I think you can see a direct correlation into the numbers of citations written. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Chief, for coming in to the report. And I just want to say I support everything you guys are doing. You're doing a fantastic job. And the clear unit, that was your kind of brainchild, right, if I remember right? You kind of... I had the idea, but some other folks did all the heavy lifting and the hard work to make it work. And Lieutenant Young was fantastic when he was our clear unit officer, and he's moved on up to the ranks and he's doing different things now. But I appreciate everything you've done, and I do look forward to your plan and hope that we can put all of it into action. But certainly the clear unit officers back in place, but really to help you with everything you need to do to keep us safe. Thank you very much. Chief, I just have a quick question. Of course, I want hopefully that you know how much I appreciate the police department. I work very closely with them in several areas of my district, and the clear unit is a big plus, I think, to our neighborhoods. There are many neighborhoods that don't have those officers that I think would benefit, so I certainly support that. My question was about, I know when we got the report from the weekend and there were four of the heroin overdoses, and thankfully the fire department was able to save three of those. As a community, do you know of anything that we could do to, I mean, a person that even if you say the fire department saves their life, but there's no pending legal action for that person for using heroin? or? Well, the heroin issue is very complicated, and unfortunately, it's not a stranger to those of us that lived back in the 60s and 70s. We remember some of the issues that it caused back then, but, you know, I think we're doing some things fairly unique here in the community. We have a task force together, so we're kind of looking at the problem in ways that we can all impact it from different angles, and I really think that has the most or the best chance for success in the long run. But we have the task force has folks from from emergency room physicians to the health department, treatment folks, you know, the fire departments there. They're a big, big partner in this. And they've saved an awful lot of lives in the last year and a half that we've seen this. But we have the coroner's office. We have a large room full of people when we had this. And we're all talking about what we can each do to bring something to the table and and do educational pieces that may help for the long-term prevention treatment. Once we run into folks, no matter which of us run into it, whether it's the fire department or us or somebody at the ER, to give treatment options to people so that when they're ready for that, they know exactly what they need to do and where those are. But those are the kinds of things. We bring the enforcement piece to that, and our folks have information they can pass along to individuals they run into on the street that have overdosed or that they run into and had a legal issue that we're dealing with. So, you know, as a community, we're just going to have to look at this as how we can all pitch in to help. Maybe the faith-based community has a possibility here for a partnership. But it's a tough issue and something that we're all going to have to pitch in, feel some responsibility for and, you know, participate and do what we can to help overcome it. Right. I found that report to be very sad. And, you know, and I certainly would be, I would like to see some education on, you know, on our citizens, to our citizens, to our residents of our community, what things can we do to be proactive to prevent folks from getting in that situation? I know it's not going to be 100%, but. We have some presentations we can do, and we're happy to come to any group that you get assembled that would be interested. We go to churches. We go to community groups. The Mayor's Alliance has some great folks that have been very energetic in developing some programs, too. There are a lot of folks here that have the information and are very happy to present it. But I guess you can come through us, and if you have a request or anybody has a request, and then we'll schedule it and make sure that happens. That's good to know. And are you finding any of the victims are juveniles, or are they mostly adults? Well, there's some juveniles, but they're adults. And the thing that's a little bit different with this that we haven't seen and some of the other drug trends that we've had throughout the years is this really affects all ages. I mean, we've had folks up in their 50s and so forth, the 60, that have overdosed, and we have young folks as well. So it's not really going at a specific age group or anything. So that's very widespread. It's widespread. So I was just wondering about the DARE program. Is that still in the schools? The DARE program is not. That's something that we had to, an adjustment we had to make back during the downturn. That's what I was thinking. Okay. Well, thank you very much. Thank you. We have more council members signed on. Council Member Masati. Thank you, Chief, for your presentation. with the surge in heroin use. I know there are probably a lot of private establishments that would like a police officer full-time, whether it's a bar or whether it's a restaurant or a theater, because I know a lot of this is happening. Does your collective bargaining agreement allow for the police to do that type of overtime? They can do overtime, but we still retain the right to approve those. I do. And we're very careful about allowing people to work inside establishments that serve alcohol. We have some regulations and some rules that we abide by with that. But the bargaining agreement does allow for overtime, yes. Have you had a lot of requests from private establishments to have the police presence there on a full-time basis? I haven't noticed an increase more than usual, honestly, but we do have that from time to time. We certainly do. I know in other municipalities they do. They have a police presence by a lot of private establishments all the time, And I was just curious if we were being asked that same question, whether or not we can provide that service or not. Yeah. We'll evaluate those requests as they come in. The officers have to provide information about the insurance that the business has and those kind of things. We're obviously concerned about that, and we want to vet those and make sure that our officers are working in places that, you know. I just wonder if you had an increase. You know, there's been a bigger ask from these establishments because of the use of heroin. That was my question. I haven't noticed it yet. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Kay. Thank you, Chair. Don't run away. And thank you for allowing me to speak. I'm not a member of the committee. Just a couple things. First, I want to thank you, Chief, for all the work you do and all of your folks who work on the force. and two comments. One is that there was an issue in my own neighborhood that I talked with you briefly and then some other folks about and sent a couple people out to a neighborhood association meeting. They did a great job of addressing the issue, listening to people's concerns, and kind of helping people understand what was going on. And then more generally, we've had a clear officer off and on in our neighborhood. It's a great program, and I hope that it can be reinstituted at full force. I think it's a great use of person power. It's incredibly helpful to a neighborhood that has issues. So thank you for all you do. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Lawless. Thank you. Just quickly, I think, again, what we're seeing, and as a mental health professional, have kind of been involved in this whole Casper heroin thing. The wide range is these are, by and large, people who were addicted to opiates that they no longer can get and now are using heroin. So I think that's an important piece of this. But secondly, the DARE program, while people liked the warm, fuzzy idea of it, For years, the Justice Cabinet was funding those, and there was never any empirical data that showed it made a spit of difference. So, you know, the education part, you know, most heroin addicts aren't going to church groups or neighborhood association meetings, But what to look out for, for parents to know what their kids are doing, educating parents on having those conversations with their children and know the signs to look for, I think, is important. But D.A.R.E. was just a D.A.R.E. Thank you. No one else has signed up. Thank you, Chief. And next on the agenda is additional fire stations report, and it was placed in committee by Council Member Clark. I'll assume, Chair, that Chief Jackson is going to take this one. Yes, sir. Welcome, Chief. Thank you. Thank you. We're going to, for consistencies purposes, I'm just going to open up. Chief Hoskins is the administration of the suppression chief, and he has directed the programs with the fire stations along with these overbuilding maintenance. So we'll just flow into both of those projects that you requested us to do a presentation on. So we have Assistant Chief Hoskins. and then Captain King who will discuss or answer any questions in reference to building maintenance. So I'll turn it over to Chief Hospice. Thank you. Welcome. Welcome. We first spoke about this, I think, back in November, and I think Mr. Clark was asking for a little bit more detailed information about how we would implement our plan with some little bit better numbers. So I think our information in your packet is a little bit out of order. If we can start with page 12A, which was added to the packet a little bit earlier. And what this document is is just kind of a timeline. What do we intend to do? What do we hope to do it? And the financial impact of all of this. So obviously in 2015, I think most of you are aware that in the 2014 budget, we got $100,000 to begin the design phase of replacing fire station number two. Fire station two is about a 60-year-old building. It was originally a county fire station. It's on New Circle Road near Meadow Lane, and quite frankly, it's fallen apart. And so a few years ago, acreage was purchased at Eastland and Murray Drive for us to move that station as the plan for New Circle Road was to be widened and would take our apron away. So in this coming fiscal year, we'll be asking for money to build that building. And we're also looking forward to the next step of our plan, which would be to build a fire station in the Masterson Station area. So you see there our first fiscal year of 2015 is construction for Station 2 and to purchase some land and begin the design phase of Station 24. Station 24 would be located out in the Masterson Station area. Once again, it's no great secret that there's a lot of people that live in that area and there's no fire stations that were built when that area was developing. We might call it a stroke of luck. We might call it just timing, but Citation Boulevard is finally being constructed through there. We think that gives us a good avenue and a nice place to put a fire station and have access. So for fiscal year 2016, we're looking to build Station 24. We're looking to go ahead and buy the apparatus. Buying fire trucks takes about anywhere from 8 to 10, 12 months to get them built. so we would have to get those ordered. We find that prepaying for those apparatus saves us several thousand dollars. And then we're working on through the land acquisition and the design for the next station, which would be fire station number 25. I want to say that through 2015, 2016, there are no personnel costs. We've yet to open a fire station. We're just trying to find property and trying to get buildings built. So in fiscal year 2017, we would be building Station 25. Station 25 is hopefully going to be located somewhere in the Polo Club Manowar area. We know there's going to be a lot of development in that particular part of the county. They've already announced the plans to build a high school in that area. There will be other schools and thousands of homes built in that area. So our next step hopefully will be in the Polo Club area, and we hope to build that station in fiscal year 2017. So you see, as you work down the page, you see that in 2017, building Station 25 and buying the apparatus. 2018, we look forward to the next fire station, which we would call Fire Station 26, and we hope for that to be somewhere in the Hayes Boulevard, Athens Boonesboro area. We see that as being another area in the county that is going to have a little bit of development, and we want to try to get ahead of that. We don't want to be 30 years behind in our building of a fire station there as we have been in Masterson Station. And as you work your way through into the final year of our plan, which is 2019, by then we've got all of our buildings built, and we're beginning to open and staffing these stations. Obviously, people is a big cost. You know, it's one thing to buy property, build a building, buy fire trucks, but we know that our personnel costs are always going to be a part of this equation. As I said earlier, we don't put anybody on the payroll until fiscal year 2017. And if you look at the bottom right hand of this page, you'll see how our payroll is going to be impacted through 2017, 2018, and 2019. Are there any questions, Council Member? Can I say something? I can't push the mic. Council Member Clark. Thank you, Chair. Chief, I was wondering, there's a considerable difference between construction costs between two and the other newer stations. Couldn't you explain the, like, I think it's like 50% more expensive? Station two, we have two and a quarter acres at Murray Drive and Eastland Drive. We have outgrown our complex on 3rd Street. We find ourselves to be hampered by our ability to manage programs, to just our day-to-day operations are constricted by the fact that we are out of office space. We're out of everything. So, Station 2, with its size of that lot out there, we hope to build more of a campus where we can move some of our support services from our Third Street Station out to Station 2 to be a little bit more efficient. We also plan to have a classroom. Much of our required training is done in a classroom setting, but we're sending everyone to Old Frankfurt Pike to do training. So, that travel time becomes an issue. We've got people on the road for a long time when they're out away from their districts. So by having that classroom on Eastland Drive, we're hoping to cut that travel time, make our training for that classroom-oriented-only type training a little bit more efficient. We hope to move our special operations commander, the EMS commander, all those folks, we want to move out to Eastland Drive and give them offices, our medical director. We've got a doctor on staff. We can't even give him an office. So we're trying to use this opportunity. I mean, two and a quarter acres inside New Circle Roads, there's not too many of those plots out there that we already own. So we're really trying to make our operation a little bit more efficient out there. And so that extra $2 million is more like more offices and a training room? Offices, classroom, warehousing space for our general station supplies, our medical supplies and that type of operation. All right. Good. Thank you very much. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Akers. Thank you, Chair. Thank you so much. I like the forward thinking and the planning and anticipating needs versus reacting to needs decades later, as you mentioned. When you talk about include a million dollars for land acquisition for each of the new stations, is that just an estimate? Is that based on it? That is a very loose estimate. We have not, you know, obviously we don't, we as the fire department do not go out and negotiate a sale for property. So that's just a number, it's a place holding number. I sincerely hope we can get by with less money. Yeah, I hope so. And the design as well, is that based on the New Circle Road design, or is that? No, Station 2 will be a separate design because of, for one thing, it's kind of in an industrial area. So that design, what fits in that neighborhood will be different from where we're going to these residential neighborhoods. However, for Stations 24, 25, and 26, we do intend to use the same design. Right, and architect and all that stuff to save costs, I presume. That's great. Well, thank you. I think this is very helpful. So thanks. Thank you, Chair. Do you have more to present? We don't have any other council members signed up on this item. We've spoken about what we intend to put in each one of our stations. This is on the screen now. We talked about this in November, just kind of a layout of what do we expect to do in these stations. We can recap it or we don't have to keep going over the same thing. Thank you. Then next on the agenda is outsourcing the fire building maintenance. Will you also be presenting on that? Thank you, sir. This was placed in committee by the budget link, which was a year ago. Yes, ma'am. So thank you. Just this first document that should be in your packet is just kind of a recap of what our building maintenance is. The fire department occupies, owns, controls, maintains, however you want to put it, 44 buildings across the county. We do that with a staff of three civilian workers and one sworn firefighter, Captain King here, who is our supervisor who coordinates that whole operation. Twenty three of those 44 buildings are obviously fire stations, which means people are in them 24 hours a day. There's there's little to no downtime in a fire station when it comes to what's going on as far as, you know, how many times a day the refrigerators open, how many times a day the restrooms are used, how many times a day the doors open and close. It's kind of a different animal when it comes to those type of buildings. When we look back to 2010, we had three civilian employees and six sworn employees assigned to building maintenance. In 2011, we all kind of got together and we had to make some changes in all of our operations. We took all of our sworn people out of building maintenance and put them back riding fire trucks. So now we're doing, as everyone is, we're doing about three times the work with three civilians trying to address the problems that we come up in these buildings. One of our, actually one of our civilian positions is open right now. We're advertising to try to fill that, so we've got two people trying to keep track of all these folks. Our building maintenance people, as we find all of our civilian employees at the fire department, are quite talented. We hire some of these people in and require them to be an electrician, but they have to figure out how to fix plumbing, overhead doors, and any other of the systems that's going on inside the fire station. We also rely a lot on our sworn people to do just some of the basic work in the fire station. Just this past year, three of our fire stations have had some pretty extensive work done inside the station, and a lot of that was done by the crews. Obviously, we have to have an electrician do electrical renovation-type work, but firefighters can be in there. They're real good at demolition, to be quite honest with you. But they put their skills to work as best they can, and in their downtime between runs, they've contributed greatly to the remodeling of some of our stations. EC10 went on duty this past year. We put it over here at Station 3, which had been a single company house, which it was remodeled back to accommodate the ambulance crew. The living quarters, the bay, we used part of it, was contracted out to a local contractor to do some of the more structural work. A lot of the other remodeling in the living quarters were done by the crews, and we see that a lot. A lot of times the crews will just kind of get tired of where they're living and they want to do something. We try to support them the best we can. One of the things that always comes up is this outsourcing of building maintenance is, you know, but these buildings open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They fail at odd hours. And we feel like that we would be spending quite a bit more money if everything we had to repair, we had to call a contractor and first get on their schedule. You know, if it's five degrees below zero when the heat in a bay fails, that bay door is going to keep going up and down just like the heat was working. By us having staff that Captain King can call and say, we've got a problem, go look at it, Many times those are issues that our staff can repair without having to call a specialized contractor, and we get the Bay Heat back going to where we can maintain that operation. Just recently, just a story we had, ice came through, and as it happens, we lost power at one of our fire stations, and lo and behold, our backup generator had failed at that station. One of our civilians, at 1130 at night, we pulled them in. They spent about five hours getting one of our spare generators taken out to the station, and we're back up and running within just four or five hours. Over time, we paid him a couple of hundred dollars. Had we called an electrician in at their rate, we would have paid him a whole lot more. So we see the value of having our folks in building maintenance available to us. This, we do have relationships with many contractors. Bay doors, as you know, about every fire station's got a couple of bay doors on it, and they cycle several thousand times a year. So we have a real good relationship with overhead door companies. But we polled them and said, if we were to be calling you after hours, if we were to be asking you to come work on this, how much would we pay? And this is just a little bit of an example of some of the hourly rates that we think we would be paying if we outsourced all of this maintenance compared to, obviously, our own folks. Thank you, sir. Does any council member have any questions? We also have a presentation from John Sheet and Facilities Management. The same. Good afternoon. I've got a very brief presentation we've been asked to provide you all with an overview of what's going on at FIRE in terms of the facilities services, and as well as what we, the facilities management under general services, have been looking into. Facility needs, by nature, they're not that specific, with very few exceptions. So we felt like some of the initiatives and some of the future plans that we've been looking at last couple of years will definitely be applicable to other facilities such as fire as well as the corrections. We've been talking to the director over there also trying to provide some assistance. There are about four areas we're going to be touching very quickly. One is the current operational status. By the way, some of these are probably going to be more or less summary of what the chief just talked about. Immediate challenges and opportunities, short and long-term plans, and then other miscellaneous items. This is just summarizing what Chief Hoskins just talked about. Looking at fire, you got approximately 181,000 growth score footage. 23 of the fire stations are about 65% of that score footage. 11 auxiliary and support facilities, about 35%, which is in line with what we expect. One number I found very interesting was we were looking at based on the data we have in regard to the age of the facilities and how many facilities we got that are older than 40 years old. As you can see, there is quite a bit of a difference there in terms of the first column, that is the number is zero, is any facility fire station primarily that has been constructed during the past 10 years, and then the next one is 10 to 20, and then 20, 30, and so forth. As you can see to the far right, you've got a few facilities that are 90 plus, and you've got two that are 100 plus. That's a testament to the old construction methods, but also what FIRE has done in the past in terms of trying to keep these buildings functioning and moving forward. So that just kind of gives you all a snapshot of what we've got over there. A few items, again, as I said, facilities management, staffing is something that Chief talked about. Be very honest with you, I've been doing this for a long, long time. It's a miracle that they've been able to do so much with such little amount of resources. They've got some very good technicians. They just lost the really good ones to another location. So, and even with three, I just find it hard to believe that they can keep up with what needs to be done. And that's above and beyond your typical FM services. I mean, as Chief said, you've got housing quarters in there, you've got appliances, and things such as that that really you're not going to find on your typical facility there. We're trying to help and trying to identify some historical facilities repair and maintenance costs. One of the items that is the driver behind making a decision on changing operational mode, be it insourcing, outsourcing, or what have you, is trying to establish a baseline, and just being able to see what is it that you've got and identify some opportunities. It might be just operational issues. It might be financial, what have you. And be honest with you, at the least you're going to need about a 36 months, probably 60 months worth of data to really give you a picture of what's been spent, for what purpose, and so forth. One thing that FHIR hasn't had in the past have been a automated computerized maintenance management system. It's a system that by which you receive requests for work orders and assign the work orders and keep track of the cost associated with each location and then at each location the components that you spend money on. And that's something we've been in discussions with FAR as well as corrections, because we also want to improve the current software we got. So we felt like this would be a good opportunity to look at one software we feel like is going to provide those services to all three parties there. Another thing, as Chief just gave you all a overview, was the long-term CIP plans. Now those, what you were presented primarily were in regard to expansion and additional fire stations. Want to make sure that also the need of the current facilities are not overlooked. Quite a few of them are in desperate need of recapitalization and major repairs. And that's something deferred maintenance items will catch up with you sooner or later. So we got to, as we look forward toward having new facilities, we got to make sure that we've been provided with resources to maintain what we've got. The other item is reduction and consolidation opportunities, as also Chief mentioned. That's something we're doing right now with Station 2 design. Trying to identify as you develop these stations, what are some of the opportunities and the needs that FHR has in terms of short, mid and long term in regard to incorporating other operations with a fire station. And the other thing we're also looking at is we develop the design in mind for the next 20 to 40 years. We're also going to incorporate as part of the specification and construction the opportunity to expand these facilities as needed. CMMS implementation, as I mentioned, we are in the process of releasing an RFP for a web-based system that would provide services not only to facilities management with general services, but also corrections and fire department. I believe that would probably provide a very valuable tool to all of us in order to be able to get a much better set of data. There are a few options available to you in regard to the facilities management. You can keep the current system, be honest with you. I don't see that be sustainable. What's being done right now is just, no pun intended, putting out fires and plugging holes. So I believe that is not a valid option. Obviously, one item is outsourcing the entire operations. That could prove to be a very costly item for a variety of reasons. Number one right now, I think they're going rate, it's anywhere from seven to $12 a square foot for outsourcing these operations and might even be higher since fire is a 24-7 operation. So it's not your typical office or business or commercial to look, but it could be proven costly. Now, we didn't have any base data, so in order to really take a look at each of these options objectively, you have to do at least a 20-year lifecycle cost, and that will give you probably a much better view of how much each of those options will cost you. The other one is the insourcing the entire operation. What does that entail is to absolutely test, step back, take a very good look at what are the resources and what is the staffing level right now that fire has in order to maintain all of these facilities. And I can tell you what they've got, you're not going to be able to do that. Just based on the size and based on the nature of the operations, if you're going to look at that, you're probably looking at least, at the least, probably close to about 14, 15 staff members to properly oversee this kind of work. And it could prove to be very expensive. We just, from my division's experience, we do not compete pay-wise with a lot of private and even to some extent some other governmental entities in being able to recruit highly technical staff that can provide you that kind of knowledge base that you need. Then the fourth one is the one that we've really been looking at and implementing as we go, and far, as Chief showed you, to a certain extent, have started looking at this. It is a hybrid system. What do we do is, in this case, you identify specifically, specific functions that really will cost you a lot of money trying to keep the staffing on to be able to conduct those. What are those HVAC systems? Any kind of automation system you might have, high end electrical systems, be it backup generators and so forth. So what we do is, with our case, and we started a two year program last year, and he has paid dividend quite a bit so far. We identified, for example, all of our chiller systems, and we advertised, issued RFP, and we received a very good proposal, and we're in the second year of that contract where a contractor will come in and do the preventive maintenance on all of these units. That's where you get the biggest bang for the buck in terms of minimizing your downtime and emergencies. We've done the same thing with boilers, the same thing with cooling towers, water treatments, data center cooling needs, and so forth, and we continue to do so. So what does that provide us is to take the staff we've got in-house and maximize their use in areas that we can take care of on a day-to-day basis. In this regard, your project management, internal staff is going to be very critical, making sure these projects are managed the right way. Even the best contractors and partners time to time happen to take you for granted. So you're going to want to make sure that the taxpayers' funding has been spent in a responsible manner. That really, as I mentioned, I'd be glad to answer any questions. Just want to give you all a 30,000-foot overview of what are some of the options that's out there. Thank you, John Shee. We have a few council members that have questions. Council Member Farmer. Thank you, Madam Chair. John Shee, back up to the last one where you'd run through the four. This one? Yeah, that's it. So you're already implementing a hybrid facilities management system, it sounds like to me. You're halfway into a two-year program. That's correct. And so what is the current system, then? Does the current system include? The current system, this is in regards specifically to the fire department. Okay. The hybrid that I discuss is what we have been implementing, we being facilities management with general services, two different groups. So you have not been providing those hybrid, you haven't been doing that for fire department facilities? No. Their need to a certain extent are different. For example, they don't have chiller systems. They've got a few boilers. A lot of the stations, due to the age and the size of them, are used, what we call a light commercial system in terms of cooling and heating. So there are some of the things we'd be glad to assist them with those areas like we're doing with corrections currently. So kind of when you're asked to help then? I'm not getting the handoff here. If something's major wrong at one of the fire stations? We're providing services right now, as a matter of fact, to fire in terms of environmental remediation, and a lot of the stations to varying degrees have issues. As a matter of fact, we put on our CIP request for 2015 $300,000 for fire. In terms of day-to-day operation of their maintenance, we do not get involved with that. If they ask us, which they've done in the past on a time-to-time basis, just going in and helping out and providing a hand or a second opinion and so forth, we take care of. But at this stage, we ourselves are also extremely shorthanded in terms of staffing. I guess this issue has appeared on the agenda today with the notation that it came from a budget link. And I'm wondering, are you already trying to do the summation of what's going on here, or does this need further work? I'm just confused as to where we could... In my opinion, this is a starting point to seriously look at the system and trying to identify a short and long-term plan on how does the council want to move forward in terms of facilities maintenance for the fire department. The very first thing that is needed at this point is actually is a condition assessment that needs to be done at each of those stations and each of the facilities. And what you do, you identify obviously the envelope. You take a look at your roofing. You take a look at your environmental. You take a look at your MEP in terms of boilers, chillers, HVAC, plumbing, electric, and so forth. and the rest of it would be the specialty items that in their case would be in regard to the firehouses. So are you doing this for the rest of government and just not doing it for fire? Well, if I had done it for the fire, I would not have been able to do it for the facilities that I am primarily responsible for. There's only very few that we have, so lack of resources. Our group was cut during the past three years by 37 employees, and so you barely can manage taking care of your own facilities, and so that's been very challenging. I didn't really get anywhere, but thank you very much. Thank you. Council Member Lane. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. have you actually gone through the fire stations and looked at them to determine how well maintained they are at this time? No. Okay. That has never been my charge. We've stopped by fire stations and tried to provide some assistance in different areas. What does the chief tell you? Are they really well maintained or are they not that well maintained or are they need help? Well, I'll be honest with you. I've been through enough stations to tell you, as I mentioned, And if you expect three people to maintain, even four or even five people, to maintain these stations at the level they should be, it is not going to happen. So what you do, you plug holes and you band-aid things and hope for the best. And that's the same situation we were in quite a few years ago. So it all comes down to prioritizing in terms of where facilities management operation overall fit into fire day-to-day operation and receiving the same recognition that they need, but also be provided with the resources and the staffing they need to do the work. Have you actually taken the cost of the current LFUCG employees that are working to maintain the fire stations to see what that total cost is and compare it to outsourcing to determine whether it's cost-effective or it may cost more, but we get a better service or better work or faster response times? I wish it was that clean cut. The issue is until about a year ago, FAR was using still a few sworn employees. They still managed to do that just because there are no other options in some of the smaller projects. There's no way that I can objectively be able to get you a data at what the actual all-inclusive cost of maintaining these facilities. Now, there are benchmarks out there nationally that you can hit it within about an 80%, 85% certainty, making adjustments based on what region we're in. But in terms of being able to actually take the data, because I can tell you I can take those three, what is costing with the three civilian employees, and based on cost per square footage, they probably got the most efficient facilities management group in the world. But that doesn't show you the true picture. And as I said, they do a lot of improvisation and prioritization, and that's all they got that made available to them. Well, if you did outsource 100%, you would still need someone who works for the government to manage the outsource agents to approve their contracts and to review their work and approve their final payments and all that. So you still would have some control. That is correct. When we look at the number of the stations and the locations and so forth, in addition to your support facilities, you're going to have one primary facility manager that would be in charge of overall contract negotiation, contract management, and so forth. Then you're probably going to need at least three or probably four what we call zone managers who are going to be responsible for all the ongoings and each of those groups. and keep in mind that a lot of the facilities management contracts these days, unless you're willing to pay quite a bit of money up front, do not include major repairs or long-term CIPs and so forth. And that's another layer of work that's going to be always there irregardless. You won't be able to really, without spending quite a bit of money, to be able to account for those type of activities. We just talked about day-to-day operation. Okay. I think my closing comment would be is that I believe if the fire department wanted either to insource what they're doing now and keep all of the maintenance under their control or to outsource would be the two options. To me, a hybrid is not good because if you've got two different groups working on something, the other guy screwed up, not me. and, you know, you have a hassle perhaps in, you know, managing to work on that. With a hybrid, it's primary. For example, with the chillers that I talked to you about, we have a multi-year contract with one specific vendor, and they provide all the required PM, which is in times of our chillers are three times a year. There's a list that the manufacturer would need for you to do. Then we also get in unit pricing. So if they, during their inspections, they come across something that is a problem, then there is a base fee that we can go ahead and take care of those. So all of these got handled by individual contracts, but they're sort of a long-term commitment and relationship. Thank you, Jamshi. My time is up. Thank you. Council Member Akers. Thank you, Chair. Thanks, Jamshi. Can you tell me, did you or your department ever oversee the fire department facilities even prior to your 37-person staff cut? Yes, and I'll explain to what extent. Before I joined LFECG, a few years before that was a management study that was done, and part of the recommendation was to combine the maintenance activities from fire, general services, and parks and recreation. That incorporation was done without really digging into it and putting a system in place that is going to identify exactly what are the responsibilities of each group to what extent because each of those departments got some activities that are specific to their operation. When I got here, primarily all that was is the budgeting as well as processing the paperwork for the payroll. That was it. In terms of day-to-day operation, in terms of being able to create a cohesive organization that will do that, there was nothing in place. at that time we started looking at what would it really takes to make this thing work and before you know it we got hit by budget cuts and everything. So at that point the whole system was dysfunctional at best. Decision was made let's restore these groups back to their groups that way they have a little bit more say so about what needs to be done, when and so forth. And that's pretty much, that was the last time we tackled that issue. Do you know if other cities practice this as well? I mean, is this a common practice for governments to be hands-off of their fire department? We look at about 20, 25 different operations, cities, peer groups, larger ones, smaller ones. It runs the entire gamut. You've got some cities, for example, that have their own fleet management for the police. They've got facilities, operations that have got facilities management, all of them under the same groups. that you've got them that are separated. So there's not really a hard, fast rule to look at this. Everybody is going to have to look at their own organization and be able to come up with the best method. Okay. Thank you. Could I ask the assistant chief or chief a question? first of all i just want to say um responding to john sheet saying that we have the greatest facilities management team in the world on the fire department um of how lucky we are that firemen are generally really handy and so they can fix stuff and so i think that that's um an asset for sure that we are overcapitalizing on, I guess. I wanted to ask how, or if there's a process currently for work orders, things that need to be fixed, is there any process for reporting them or prioritizing them or tracking how much you spend on them? Yes, yes, and no. The system we use is a simple email system. There's a mailbox that all of our building maintenance folks have access to, people in the stations when they have a problem. Obviously, if it's a critical problem, if we've got a pipe broken and water is falling out on the floor, we take care of that with the people in the fire station. But then they report to Captain King, who essentially looks at the problems, prioritizes that, and sends them out. And daily, we can get him up here to answer this, and he can tell you how many times a day he redirects his staff. But it's a constant juggling of, I've sent employee A out to do this, and then I get a call or an email, and we have to send him somewhere else to address a problem. Putting out fires is a very, I was not going to use that analogy. It is a very, very good way of what our building maintenance folks do every day. As far as tracking, no, we do not. There's so much going on on a daily basis. Recordkeeping in that form has just not been something that was ever established that I know of. So do you have a line item in the budget for maintenance, repairs? We do have repairs and maintenance. And I think this past year it was about $115,000 in that account. We had spent about 18%. We're down to about 18% of that left now. So we're buying a lot of duct tape right now. But we went through it fairly quickly. I think what you have there, and I think that's in the packet, if I'm not mistaken, we've got about three months' worth of the inbox there, just 13 pages, somewhere around over 300 requests for help me do something. And if you look at them very closely, you'll see there are some repeated requests because prioritization puts some people behind. Sure. Okay, thank you very much. I'll let Captain King tell you how he keeps track of the costs and if he can even attribute them to each station. When I took over the division of facilities, we had work order sheets that would come in and I went to the civilians that we were down to three civilians at the time and asked what they thought was efficient they liked it they did not the paperwork trail was not efficient for one person to keep up with so I did away with them we use email text talk and we just communicate and we get it done I do have a spreadsheet that I keep on every every penny that we spend, and I can tell you when I bought it, where I bought it from, where it went, what it is, and I break it down by the months. Last year I did 661 Pro Card reconciliations, and one Pro Card reconciliation, I don't know if you're familiar, but they take a long time, and one may encompass several repairs through different stations. So that's how I do it, and that's how we get by. I don't have – I could use a couple of secretaries with the money we're using and keeping track of the paperwork, but we get by. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Clark. Thank you. Chief Hoskins, please. Just real quickly, your construction costs and so forth for $15, $6.75 million. What about the training tower? Is that part of your 15 budget? That is not. It's not? It's simply the construction of Station 2 and the property acquisition, hopefully, for 24 and beginning the design phase. But you are asking for funding for that. We are asking our capital improvements projects for next budget. Yes, it is at the top of the list. That's what I was wondering. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you. I have a few questions that I would like to ask. I don't feel like we've accomplished much, but I don't know. Maybe it's just me. But is there a problem? How do you propose we fix it? And I would like to hear from the chief and Jamshed or? Relative to is there a problem? Yes. I mean, we have 44 properties. Right. Do we manage those, and do we keep the 23 fire stations running every day? Yes, we do. The easy button, as I said three years ago, is give us some money, but we can't do that. So what we do is we manage. The fix would be to give us the personnel. As has been stated, Captain King is an excellent project manager. That's basically what he does. and he manages his budget. We had $115,000. He's down to 18% right now. So can we do it? Yes, we can do it. Can we fix the issue with nine? I think Joshi talked about nine personnel. We can't do it because we have so many problems. I mean, so many facilities. Along with the facilities, the fire stations, we have a number of other things that we have to maintain. our training academy, investigations. So we have a number of entities that we have to maintain. And as managers and facilitators of the Lexington Fire Department, we make it work. You know, we don't come and, as Chief Basson said earlier, we don't come and ask for a lot of money to fix these things because, by nature, we are fixers. So, but what, I guess, to answer your question, how do we fix it? It's a slow process, and the process will begin with us identifying the issue which you had, then putting together some of the small steps that are necessary to maintain the facilities that we have right now. in our request. We're going to request adding one or two more people to help us to continue to manage what we're doing now as far as civilian personnel. Three years ago, you asked us to retool. We retooled the process. We took all the sworn people out. We have one guy, Captain King, who's the project manager over all our facilities. Now we just need to add the civilian support and we'll continue to maintain until we're able to add some of the projects that Mr. Berendering wants to as far as being able to insource the project. And in insourcing, instead of doing what we did about 15 years ago, which he made reference to is just put a program together and make it work, we want to be able to sit down at the table with general services and create a plan, a plan that works for not only the fire department, but the city as a whole. So it's a short-term fix to allow us to have the civilian personnel to support Captain King and what he does. And then the mid-range and long-term plan would be to be able to sit down at the table, fix the program the right way, and not just throw a bunch of people at it and make them, everybody get mad and want to take their basketball and go to their own individual courts. So that would be the short-term, the mid-term, and the long-term fix to the problem with fire and I think the overall issues with the urban county government facilities. I'm sorry. Thank you, Chief. So I guess I was just curious about how this committee should move this forward or if you could bring back a proposal like this is what we're going to do, have it in writing with a plan and an implementation date? If I could, I'm going to take your shirt and put it on with no tie. Is there any way that we could have Commissioner Mason and Jeff Reed get together put something together with Jobs Shee, Assistant Chief Hoskins, and then we come back with a plan for the future. Okay, I think that's a real good plan. I didn't want to put any work on Jeff Reed, but he's not here. But I understand the dilemma with so many properties. You need a property manager, but yet if you can contract part of it out, the more complicated things, HVAC. But, you know, it's like there's other things within those stations that are critical, that things are working, particularly the doors. Right. And that's what Captain King does. You know, we try to fix the things we can, but, you know, with the border with Station 1, as Mr. Baron-Durne made a reference to, And they worked together to get that together. Now the guys at Station 1 have at least a few. And it needs to be consistent among, yes. Yes, ma'am. Thank you all so much. So do you think, how long do you need to? Well, I can't, I don't know about the commissioner, but Jeff Reed says that we could probably get that to you after we set a date to meet. So if we could come back to you, I could email you and give you a date, and then we can put it in a future meeting. Okay. Can I say April? A meeting? For the budget. Okay. Can we say May? May. That sounds good. May. Thank you very much. Yes, ma'am. Council Member Clark, did you? I do have just one quick thing. It's not a question. I just want to congratulate Chief Jackson for the really good article in the Herald Leader. Thank you. Thank you. That is the last item on our agenda. So if we would move to items in committee, and I would ask if anyone has any comments on any of these items, can we remove any of the items? Council member Farmer's not here. If not, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. Thank you. Thank you.